ChatGPT and a forklift
Ted Chiang: “Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.”
iA Writer is not AI
A college prof bans iA Writer. But iA Writer is not an app for AI-generated prose.
Distraction-free devices
In The New Yorker, Julian Lucas wonders whether “distraction-free devices” can change the way we write. I was distracted by errors of fact about Ralph Ellison and Frank O’Hara.
Pencils in the news
The Guardian reports that increasing number of English schoolchildren are unable to hold a pencil properly. The reason: too much technology.
notepad.cc
A piece of paper in the cloud.
Recently updated
WhiteSmoke now has a demo, and the results do not inspire confidence.
Word processing, c. 1987
“It amuses me to realize that while many an English Department still houses a ‘computer lab’ (a classroom filled with the hum of machines), the prospect of writing in a word processor has come to feel faintly quaint.”
Grammarly, WhiteSmoke
“Any service that gives its own writing a 61 and William Zinsser a 54 is a service I wouldn’t trust. I’ll add that any service that gives my writing a higher score than Zinsser’s is a service I wouldn’t trust.”
About machine-scoring
“It is worth asking: is this scheme meant to “free” professors for other tasks, or for unemployment?”
Facebook CEO likes paper, pens
She confesses to the New York Times.
A Plain Text Primer
At A Better Mess, Michael Schechter is writing about the benefits of working with plain text files.
Literature and word-processing
From the New York Times: “Jimmy Carter set off what may have been the first word-processing-related panic in 1981, when he accidently deleted several pages of his memoir in progress by hitting the wrong keys on his brand-new $12,000 Lanier.”
Moleskine app
“To my mind, the design involves the same analog-to-digital mistake that Apple’s Notes app makes.”
NoteSlate
“[Y]ou will love the wooden feeling of writing or drawing.”
The story of QWERTY
Keyboard history
John Gruber on typing and the iPad
"You absolutely do not need a hardware keyboard for it. But if you're hoping to do any amount of serious writing with it (and, for obvious vocational reasons, I plan to), you're going to want one."
Lawrence Wright on writing tools
Index cards, legal pads, a fountain pen
On "On the New Literacy"
So what do you think about the claim that “online media are pushing literacy into cool directions”? I, uh, don’t see it.
Greeklish
"The growing use of Greeklish by schoolchildren is adversely affecting their spelling skills and may ultimately pose a threat to the Greek language, according to a recent study."
Y txt msgs r ltd 2 160 chars
An explntn
John Hope Franklin's ways of writing
Paper and pen, computer
"Writing in the Age of Distraction"
Cory Doctorow: "When you come to a factual matter that you could google in a matter of seconds, don't."
Thinking with pens and pencils
Dutch psychologist Christof van Nimwegen has written a dissertation arguing that pens and pencils are crucial in the development of creativity and intelligence.
Mac writing tools
The Unofficial Apple Weblog's survey of text-editors, word-processors, and utilities
Writing, technology, and teenagers
Thoughts on a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project
WriteRoom
[Click to enlarge and read.] Smultron (by Peter Borg) TextWrangler (Bare Bones Software) WriteRoom (Hog Bay Software) Related posts...
Utnapishtim's word-processor
The IBM Displaywriter
How to send telegrams
From a 1949 secretarial manual
Blockwriter
simple writing software
Word 2007
Word 2007 vs. my simple Word 2003 layout